Dying for Sex is a 2025 dramedy series about a woman, Molly, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and leaves her husband in search of sexual fulfillment.
In S01E03 “Feelings Can Become Amplified”, Molly starts taking a medication that gives her mood swings, while also struggling with vaginal dryness. She has a peculiar relationship with a man in her apartment building (aka “Neighbor Guy”): she’s disgusted by him, but she has a “mistake orgasm” by masturbating while she can hear him masturbating through their shared thin wall.
While taking out garbage in the middle of the night, she bumps into Neighbor Guy again and berates him for leaving trash in the hall, then insults him personally. He plays along with this, to her surprise. They retreat into their apartments. Molly masturbates again and she can hear the neighbor masturbating too. He event asks for permission to orgasm, which she denies him.
I see this as a case of retroactive consent, that Molly’s wrath at Neighbor Guy is excused by his arousal and lack of objection. That said, I don’t think real anger or hate has any place in a BDSM scene.
After being kicked out of a support group for early cancer, because she accidentally mentioned she has stage 4, Molly blows up at Neighbor Guy again for leaving his trash in the hall. She asks if he’s going to jerk off to this again, and he says yes. “Let me watch,” she says.
In Neighbor Guy’s apartment, Molly goes into domme mode unwittingly, telling him to get undressed. Her mood swing rage, by coincidence, perfectly matches his masochism. When she talks about kicking him in the groin, he tells her to do it. However, she also injures her cancer-weakened thigh and they both end up on the floor in pain.
In the hospital, Molly blames herself for this situation, and says she hates her body. “I can’t even have normal orgasms from normal sex.” She admits what she was doing when she was injured, and adds “I loved it.”
Her friends are happy at this. Molly says, “I don’t want to have to hurt people to have orgasms. Whats is wrong with me?”
Her palliative care counselor tells her that sex is not just penises in vaginas. “Sex is a wave.”
After a life of sexual dissatisfaction, Molly’s quest is a search for sexual fulfillment, not romantic. What is sex for a heterosexual woman who has uncoupled it from any idea of long term partnership (mostly because she doesn’t expect to live very long)? She’s effectively rewriting her sexuality from scratch, which includes the possibility of BDSM. The Neighbor Guy plotline also metaphorises Molly’s new lack of normative boundaries.
